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David and I are staying in a 300-year-old house and uh we've both smashed our head on the beams twice
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already. Uh but this is both our first Davos, David. It's our first Davos. We've been here for 24 hours and um uh
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any first impressions here. >> Um it's interesting. You know, we're
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we're staying very far away. >> Yeah, >> they didn't apparently they didn't want
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you to be part of this. >> They didn't want me too close. Yeah. >> But we finally we got you finally got
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you an invitation. your invitation to not get lost in the mail. >> My invitation didn't get lost in the
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mail this time. >> For those of you who watch the pod, you know what I'm talking about.
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>> Inside joke. Um, but it's great to be here and uh great to be here at USA
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House. Thanks to all the sponsors and um really delighted for our first guest for
00:00:44
the pod. Sarah Rogers works for is the under secretary uh for public diplomacy at the State Department. for members
00:00:53
here who don't know this position or what you've been charged with or what
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you've decided to work on. I'm curious about that. Do they tell you what to do
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or do you come up with your own mandate? But yeah, tell us everything about what
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you're doing. >> Longtime listener, first time guest and thank you to both of us. Uh thank you
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from all of us at America House for joining us here. >> Yeah. >> So I am the under secretary for public
00:01:14
diplomacy and when I got this nomination, my friends and family all congratulated me and then conferably
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said what is that? >> Yeah. Uh so diplomacy traditionally concerns the relationship between the
00:01:25
American government and foreign governments. Two ambassadors, shake hands, make a deal, um solve a war. But
00:01:32
public diplomacy is different. Public diplomacy addresses the relationship between the American government and
00:01:37
foreign publics. And this has become a very important under secretariat with the rise of the internet and then during
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the Biden administration especially uh these mushrooming concerns about so-called disinformation and what do we
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do when there are allegedly malign influences on the public view of America um the public's intersection with
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American interest how do we interact with the internet and the information ecosystem that is part of my portfolio I
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also oversee other soft power activities including our educational and cultural and sports diplomacy. So I am privileged
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to play a role in the World Cup this summer and the LA Olympics coming up and uh the Fulbright program and others like
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it. So >> you seem particularly focused on freedom of speech and a little bit of tension
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between our standards and the companies in America which have made the move to being strongly freedom of speech.
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something that kind of got lost in our industry for a couple years in technology but has now made I think um
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some significant progress on does seem like some folks in Europe don't share
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our love of freedom of speech. Maybe you could explain to us what the tension is
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today and what some of the regulations are that have been put in place in Europe.
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>> Sure. Absolutely. So the two main regulations that I've interfaced with
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since taking office and part of this is just a product of my first official trip
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was to Europe and while I was in Europe a large fine came down on an American platform X under the digital services
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act which I'll get into in a moment. So Europe um especially since since the
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second world war but I think really since the American founding and our codification of the first amendment you
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know America has taken a much stronger approach on free speech than even most of the west and with the rise of the
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internet and all communication or a lot of communication becoming transnational.
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We see these new technocratic regulatory frameworks in Europe bumping up against
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the commitments to free speech in the United States. And Jason makes an important observation that for a while
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some of these large American technology platforms were more inclined to moderate
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or to censor kind of in conformity with some prevailing um some prevailing norms
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and concerns in the United States. But I think in the United States we've shifted
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back toward a less centurious approach and so have these platforms. And at the same time, you have uh regulatory
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efforts in Europe and the UK. And I'll I'll name a couple that I think have
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been particularly relevant. So the UK has something called the online safety act. The online safety act imposes age
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gating obligations on a broad swath of content, almost any content that's upsetting, and then requires platforms
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to run risk assessments for and in some cases remove content that the UK would say is illegal. And in the UK, you know,
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major categories of content are banned, are rendered illegal. That would not be illegal in the United States, which is
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where these platforms are located, which is where their original user base is, which is where their executives live um
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and which is their primary regulator. So, under the online safety act, we now have um active litigation by the
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relevant regulator against several American websites. These are websites that don't reach into the UK. They're
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not these aren't websites dedicated to discussing the queen. They're not
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websites that sell goods in the United Kingdom. These are websites that exist on American soil, host large quantities
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of American users, and in often in oftentimes discuss American political topics. But because users are permitted
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to discuss them in a way that offends UK law, there's the imposition of a UK
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fine. The Digital Services Act in the EU is similar. So DSA contains but doesn't just contain uh
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contentbased regulations, hate speech regulations. So DSA requires all of the EU member states to adopt at minimum
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kind of a floor for hate speech prohibition. And those prohibitions in the statute, I think, are much vagger
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than American lawyers are accustomed to. And one of our one of our jurist credential principles under the American
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First Amendment is if you're going to enact any regulation that comes close to
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touching speech, it needs to be very clear what you are prohibiting because you have this chilling effect concept. A
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vague prohibition will chill speech, especially when that prohibition is imposed on a large riskaverse
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corporation. So you impose vague prohibitions on large riskaverse corporations and that's how it becomes
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illegal to make jokes around the water cooler for example. You see the same effect here. Digital services act also
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regulates other aspects of um digital commerce and social media. So it regulates um things like transparency
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and competition. And I think you know we have we have a lot of Europeans in the audience today and I hope none of them
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will find it contentious if I suggest that in Europe there is more of a focus on uh technocratic regulation as an
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arbiter of what's acceptable than there might be in America where we have this
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tradition that um really emphasizes like rugged individualism and individual conscience. And to be clear, no one is
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saying, certainly not the State Department or America, hey, you can't have your own platforms in Europe,
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right? >> Build your own. Build your own Facebook, build your own Instagram, build your own
00:07:02
Twitter/X, uh, Tik Tok, whatever you'd like to build, and you can have whatever
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standards you like on your platforms. We're saying, "Hey, these are our
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platforms. This is our standard, and we don't want our users uh or our platforms
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to be receiving fines." That's that's our position. >> I I think I think that's basically it.
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And look, when American companies operate abroad, they abide by the laws where they operate. But at a certain
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point, so so we recently issued some sanctions, which we'll get into. And one
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of the individuals we sanctioned uh was a former EU official who threatened Elon
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Musk with enforcement action because X within the United States had said that it was going to host on a live uh
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Twitter space an interview with Donald Trump, our president. So it wasn't that
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Donald Trump had said anything violative. It wasn't there was a specific piece of content that the EU
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wanted to ban. It was just that the act of an American business hosting an interview with an American president
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might offend EU uh EU preferences about speech generated a regulatory threat. And when you reach across borders and
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make a threat like that, that offends American interests and American values. And so you can expect America to
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respond. And I think so I my history is as an American lawyer in American courts
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and we have you know we're a nation of 50 states and each state has its own regulations and we've had to think about
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you know when there's a website in California that operates in Texas how do you decide to what extent Texas gets to
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regulate and we have all these jurisdictional concepts like does the website purposefully avail itself of the
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forum is it is are you posting defamatory statements about a person in Texas but the mere existence of a
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website in California that Texas doesn't like is hardly ever, basically never, a
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basis for regulation. And so when we talk about things like extr territoriality, you know, what we're
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really talking about is it's undisputed that Europeans get to have their own
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laws in Europe, but we also get to have our own laws in the United States. And we're celebrating 250 years of American
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independence. And so we want, you know, we want our markets to be able to interoperate online. Um, but we're not
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willing to give up American freedom of speech and the bargain. >> Hey, David, when we look at, and I'm
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asking you this one so I can give you a pass on it, but what what do you think people are so scared of in the UK when
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it comes to freedom of speech? Uh, and and maybe the most freedom of the the most um rockus platform X specifically.
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>> Well, I don't think the people are afraid. I think the government is afraid
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of the people criticizing it and therefore they're engaged in what sensors always do which is protect the
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people in power. Um there's something Sarah you you should explain this to us
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but as I understand there have been over 12,000 people is it prosecuted or >> arrested
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>> arrested under the online safety act. Was that just in one year or is that
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since it >> that that was in 2023 alone? >> Okay. >> But that isn't just under the online
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safety act. So I think what's particularly insidious and particularly relevant about statutes like the OSA and
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the DSA is that these are portals through which existing censorship laws get applied to the internet. So a lot of
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these Brits are arrested under um ex of under existing statutes like there's a
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communications act, there's a law against inciting quote unquote racial or religious hatred. And we, I think, have
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differences of opinion about, you know, what amounts to incitement in America versus the UK. But so, for example, uh,
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you had a comedian called Graeme Lahan who tweeted that, um, if a woman sees a penis in a in a ladies room, you know,
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she should feel free to kick that guy in the balls. And that's that's something a
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lot of comedians say, and I think it channels an impulse that a lot of Americans and Europeans would frankly
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consider common sense. But he was dragged out of the airport like a terrorist, had his devices confiscated,
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was thrown in jail overnight and lost access, my understanding is to his heart medication if I recall correctly.
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>> And because this was an incitement to violence >> because this offended some existing law
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against uh provocative speech in the UK and the the online safety act is a device through which all of those
00:11:14
existing laws get applied to the internet. You had another case in the UK where Joey Breton, a footballer, um,
00:11:21
called somebody a bike nonce, which nonce is not an American term, but I imagine you're insinuating someone is
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affeminate for riding a bike so much or in the manner that he rides the bike. And that resulted in a suspended prison
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sentence, but still a prison sentence >> because he called somebody desty.
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>> Yeah. Basically, >> that's what we call in United States. >> And there were there was there were some
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other tweets, too, but none none that would meet the bar for American incitement. So, David, you're absolutely
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right. So that was in a single year of slightly over 12,000 Brits arrested for speech acts and that is more than more
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than we're arrested that year in Russia, more than in China, more than in Turkey.
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And when you talk to Brits about this, you know, you're absolutely right. Most
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of the British people that you talk to say this is totally unacceptable. And if you look at the polls in the UK, you see
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public sentiment against this kind of thing. But I've I've had, you know, both
00:12:11
public and private engagements with regulators in these countries. And the defense you hear is well, you know, we
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have a less chilling, less totalitarian environment than China. So maybe more people are willing to break the rules,
00:12:22
more people are willing to offend. But if you arrest 12,000 people a year for speech and you're raising children in an
00:12:28
ecosystem where you can be dragged out of the airport for offending the dogmas of transgender activism,
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>> then you might not have a different culture than China for long. And and why should the United States be
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paying to defend your country and support it in fighting say a proxy war against Russia if that's basically the
00:12:51
values that are being enforced. >> Right. Exactly. When we interact with our NATO allies in the NATO context, we
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hear a lot about our shared history and shared values. And it's time to ask, you
00:13:01
know, what values do we still share? We together with our allies comprised the free world after World War II and the
00:13:09
free world that was assembled against communism. But the cornerstone of a free world of any free society has to be
00:13:15
freedom of speech >> and criticizing and the uncomfortable speech is where this actual defense is
00:13:21
necessary. >> Yes. >> And we have a very special, you know, bent in the United States to really go
00:13:28
after our leaders. I do it every week with David um since he's now a public servant. I mean, we go at it and they're
00:13:35
knocking on people's doors strictly for saying like, "Hey, you know, I I might
00:13:39
have disagreements with the Catholic Church. I'm a Catholic." >> Well, a lot of it's about immigration,
00:13:44
right? I mean, so I've seen a bunch of these examples, you know, on X. I saw um
00:13:49
one clip on X where a judge was handing down a 2-year sentence against somebody.
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I don't know if if this rings a bell, but supposedly for speech that I think
00:13:59
was criticizing the UK's open immigration policies. That's where I sense a lot of the the prosecutions are.
00:14:06
Right. >> Right. And this is another place where, you know, free speech and freedom of
00:14:10
expression are American values and interests in and of themselves. But another priority for the administration
00:14:15
is common sense on mass migration. And a lot of the speech that offends those in
00:14:22
power has to do with migration policy. So, there was a 31-month sentence handed down to a suburban mother named Lucy
00:14:28
Connelly in the UK uh because after a man called Axel Rudabanka stabbed I think it was a seven-year-old girl, an
00:14:36
8-year-old girl, and a nine-year-old girl at a birthday party. There was ensuing unrest and she she tweeted uh
00:14:44
something anti-migration and it was pretty inflammatory, but it would have been unambiguously legal in the United
00:14:49
States. Um, she said, 'If this is what migration is going to do to our country,
00:14:52
and I'm paraphrasing slightly, but I remember it pretty well. If this is what
00:14:56
migration means, then burn down the migrant hotels for all I care. Uh, this was a berieved mother who' lost a child.
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She saw three little girls murdered for no reason. And she reacted and then she felt bad and she deleted the tweet. That
00:15:09
was a 30 31-month sentence. >> 31 month >> 31month sentence in the United Kingdom.
00:15:15
Meanwhile, you have actual pedophiles, actual child sex offenders who get minimal prison or none in the United
00:15:22
Kingdom. And that that's led to this um epithet that you hear among UK activists, this quote unquote two-tier
00:15:29
policing, this activist cause that they've assembled around because they sense that if you oppose mass migration,
00:15:34
if you make that kind of critique, you are subject to a different justice system than the kind of person who
00:15:40
merely agitates for Sharia law in Britain or merely downloads child pornography in Britain.
00:15:46
>> Yeah. >> So, okay. So, >> I emphasized that for >> Yeah. So I mean so I think um
00:15:52
>> that was the gong of righteousness. >> We appreciate it. >> And then just to add one more dimension
00:15:57
to this uh so US companies have been getting fined like crazy right in the UK and then the EU. Um and I think it's
00:16:08
related to this issue but can you just describe that like >> Yeah. Um because that that's where this
00:16:13
crosses over into you know an ally doing something that we think is mad into directly hurting
00:16:22
American interests I guess right or >> right so I don't believe there have been
00:16:28
any big fines under the UK online safety act yet but um its provisions take effect over time and some of those
00:16:35
provisions are just coming online now including the ones relating to AI okay >> and we have active litigation in
00:16:42
American courts right now. Um, one of the leading lawsuits involves the website 4chan, which people who are very
00:16:49
online in America may be familiar with. 4chan is kind of a no holdsbred uh promodial soup for memes and the like.
00:16:55
The cat memes come out of there. A lot of activism Occupy Wall Street came out of 4chan, but 4chan has essentially no
00:17:01
censorship rules. It bans child pornography. That's pretty much it. And so the UK has decided that 4chan is not
00:17:07
allowed to exist unless it pays a bunch of money to the United Kingdom for not policing its speech in accord with uh UK
00:17:14
laws, the numerous UK speech statutes that led to prison sentences like the one I just discussed. But there was a
00:17:20
large fine handed down during my recent European tour against X and I believe it
00:17:24
wasund€140 million euros, but that might be dollars. I'm >> Elon because they disagree with his
00:17:31
influence uh in >> uh the UK. >> Look, I can't speak for the UK regulators, but I can make inferences.
00:17:38
What's >> your ex X has a particular political veillance. Um we saw Joe Biden after
00:17:43
Elon acquired Twitter saying, you know, we we've got to find ways to go after
00:17:47
him. And I think that that sentiment might be shared. But as an under secretary of state, I'm not an advocate
00:17:53
for one American company or even one American viewpoint on the free speech issue. If any American company were
00:18:00
fined, let's say $140 million even by a foreign power for upholding the American
00:18:07
first amendment, um if General Motors were treated that way, you know, the US government would have something to say
00:18:11
about it. I also think that X is not the first company to be fined under EU digital regulations. So there's an
00:18:20
infographic that circulated recently comparing, you know, revenues raised within the EU through other metrics and
00:18:26
then revenues raised just by finding American tech companies. And there's a suspicion that this is really kind of a
00:18:31
de facto tax tax and pretexts are contrived for finding large American tech companies in order to raise
00:18:38
revenue. >> Yeah. I I so that was the thing I think I was referring to is that um and I
00:18:43
think actually the president may have um truth that out um that I think the the maybe this is more the EU but the the
00:18:51
DSA has become almost like a digital speed trap to try and find American companies and it does massly
00:18:58
disproportionately affect them to the point where you could argue that it's effectively like a
00:19:03
tariff on American tech companies operating in Europe. And if that's the case, well, I mean, I guess Europe is
00:19:11
allowed to have tariffs, but then that's going to change the tariffs that we set.
00:19:14
So, it's all part of a larger trade negotiation, >> right? Exactly. I've referred to the DSA
00:19:18
before as a censorship tariff because the cost of maintaining the censorship apparatus under the DSA is intentionally
00:19:24
levied on specific companies, mostly American ones, that are that are subject to higher and more intricate regulatory
00:19:30
standards than other companies are. And EU regulators say, "Well, that's not
00:19:34
because they're American, that's because they're large." But the fact that
00:19:38
they're American and not European surely makes them easier as a political proposition to tax. And so a lot of
00:19:44
Americans see this as a tax. >> Really bizarre. David, we're seeing we're living in a time where we're
00:19:48
seeing freedom of speech expression go down in Europe and go up in the Middle East.
00:19:54
>> You know, they just had the Riad comedy festival. There were some rules. Hey,
00:19:58
you can't criticize the kingdom. Let's leave religion off the table. But
00:20:02
you can go after your own. But uh we we might not uh we might have some uh sensitivities there and um you know and
00:20:10
then there's everything in between. South Korea does require you have a social security number essentially to
00:20:16
post online. Um but David, I'm I'm wondering what you think about this overall trend in the world of what we're
00:20:24
seeing with censorship. >> I mean it's not a good trend. Um, I think that the the purpose of
00:20:31
censorship, like I mentioned before, is always to protect the people in power and and and specifically it it insulates
00:20:38
them from criticism, but it'd be a lot better for them to hear that criticism
00:20:42
and adjust their policies than it would be to try and switch off the, you know, the feedback altogether.
00:20:49
>> And it's very clear, I think, in Europe and the UK that these policies of open
00:20:54
migration, mass migration are very unpopular. Why not listen to the people and adjust your policies instead of
00:20:59
trying to silence them? >> Uh, say what you will about President Trump. Uh, and people have varying
00:21:06
opinions, but South Park has been deranged this season. I mean, they have gone full boore in attacking him like to
00:21:16
a level that I wouldn't feel comfortable explaining the details of it. Uh, here.
00:21:20
>> Not in a family podcast. >> Not in a family podcast. But but even
00:21:25
>> President Trump has a thick skin on these things. We did have one weird
00:21:28
thing that occurred. I think it was before your time, the Jimmy Kimmel, >> Charlie Kirk Kurfluffle, but even that
00:21:34
it seemed David um President Trump and the administration and Brendan Carr friend of the pod who's been on a couple
00:21:41
times um kind of rethought that one. Yeah. >> Well, Jimmy Kimmel was back in the air
00:21:47
within was it like two or three nights. So yeah, I mean there's no real censorship there. In that case, it was
00:21:52
the network affiliates who were upset because he because Jimmy Kimmel said something untrue and malicious and
00:22:00
outrageous. So in any event, this is >> the heat of the moment with after kind
00:22:04
of worked itself out. There was no like government censorship. >> Brendan probably shouldn't have said
00:22:08
what he said in my estimation. >> Anyway, in any event, there was no government censorship. That's the bottom
00:22:13
line. Um yeah, I think it is disturbing that uh countries that we see as our closest allies that share similar values
00:22:22
that are part of the same western culture and history are moving in this direction of more and more censorship is
00:22:29
disturbing and I'm glad to see that um under President Trump the Department of
00:22:34
State is pushing back on this. I think Sarah the work that you're doing and Secretary Rubio extremely important. So
00:22:40
I think you're making a huge difference. I think we have to use the tools that we
00:22:45
have whether they're tools on trade or the denial of visas or um expressing condemnation to push back on this as we
00:22:54
you know as we will as we can. >> Let's talk about some of the new issues.
00:22:59
Uh AI uh it was pretty obvious but 18 months ago when you saw a deep fake it just didn't pass the uncanny valley. uh
00:23:10
Grock images uh Nano Banana from our friends at Google. I mean these things now if you're if you're flipping by very
00:23:17
quickly you could make a mistake. This also uh in terms of censorship we have significant protections in the United
00:23:26
States for say cartoonists as do the French and >> they're mocking public figures. How is
00:23:33
it different when you're mocking public figures, uh, presidents, prime ministers, cabinet members,
00:23:41
but the public can't tell? Cuz this is new, >> right? I think I think this is a really
00:23:47
interesting question and it's our privilege to be at this new technological frontier where these new
00:23:51
questions arise. U, I'm glad you mentioned cartoonists. So, after Charlie Kirk was murdered and I knew him, I
00:23:57
represented him on some First Amendment issues in the United States. I saw Americans walking around in an old
00:24:03
t-shirt from 10 years ago and that t-shirt said just sweet Charlie. Uh because that was a t-shirt we bought
00:24:09
when free speech in France was under threat and French people stood up for it. The Charlie Hepto cartoonists were
00:24:15
bombed. They were murdered. Yeah. >> Um for saying things that offended religious zealots. And I think you know
00:24:22
it's a different kind of religious zealatry to not want to allow any descent online. And thinking back on
00:24:29
that episode and how European consensus on free speech might have shifted since then is really sobering. But I think
00:24:35
America we take pride in being the kind of civilization where Charlie Kirk and Charlie Hebdo can both speak. I think
00:24:42
making fun of public officials. You know pointing out when the emperor has no clothes is one of the most essential
00:24:48
things you can do in a democracy. If you believe in self-governance, you have to
00:24:51
believe in that. And what's interesting about a deep fake is that the point of
00:24:55
parody is that you can tell that it's parody. But if you're depicting a public
00:24:59
official falsely in a way that people can't tell as a satirical or um non-authentic depiction, then the parody
00:25:08
tension really isn't there. And what I would say though is whenever whenever we
00:25:13
reach a new technological frontier, there's a temptation to just enact a flurry of new regulations. And if we
00:25:19
look back over history at other frontiers that have caused similar instability, like the invention of the
00:25:24
printing press, people thought that was the end of the world. The invention of the telegraph, there were worries about
00:25:28
disinformation and attention span. The invention of the film strip, people thought the train was coming at them
00:25:33
through the screen. The the the impulse to restrain that deal, to regulate, and to allow people
00:25:41
to adapt and to give freedom the benefit of the doubt, that impulse tends to be vindicated over time. When it comes to
00:25:46
deep fakes, I think we have in in America and in Europe strong legal remedies against defamation. So if
00:25:54
someone creates an image of a public figure that is false and people are believing that image and a reasonable
00:25:59
viewer would believe that that person engaged in that action, you can already sue for defamation,
00:26:04
>> right? >> And that that doesn't mean that >> and we have child protection and
00:26:08
underage laws. Those are very strong. Yes. The thing is just because you don't
00:26:12
have AI specific laws doesn't mean that you can do whatever you want with AI,
00:26:17
you could still use AI as a tool to then break the law and be prosecuted. >> I mean, if you engage in cyber hacking,
00:26:24
for example, >> and you use AI to do it, you're guilty of of a cyber crime.
00:26:30
>> Yeah. So there's a lot of things like that where uh there are plenty of
00:26:34
existing laws that apply to AI and we should just think about using all of those before you start then creating a
00:26:41
bunch of AI specific. >> Yeah. those didn't cover it >> then there would be hey maybe we need to
00:26:45
have a thoughtful discussion >> because you know I'm trying to think of
00:26:49
an edge case here but >> um for cyber security it's even hard to do like using voice clones it's just
00:26:56
fraud you know it's >> wire fraud you know >> and it might be that it you use the
00:27:02
existing fraud statute but there are little regulatory tweaks you can make the make the fraud easier to detect so
00:27:07
one approach which I don't think is always correct but it it exemplifies one
00:27:11
direction of thinking is maybe there's water marking or something on some AI
00:27:15
images that would mitigate tort liability for some of the providers. Um or when we got when we when we invented
00:27:21
capital markets on a mass scale, right? We had our old laws against fraud, but we kind of made some more fine grain
00:27:28
securities regulations like now you have to uh file a certain disclosure annually
00:27:33
with your earnings and whatnot. And we didn't fundamentally change how we treated false information. we just
00:27:38
developed some slightly more fine-tuned devices. But when I say fine-tuned, I think I think that's an important piece
00:27:45
of guidance. You don't just go crazy and try to put the technological innovation
00:27:49
back in the bottle, especially when, you know, we have foreign policy rivals like
00:27:54
China that are developing AI at um an aggressive pace. And if we if we cocoon ourselves in safety, we hurt our
00:28:02
standing in that race. So where sir, where do you think this relationship between the US and EU is now headed on
00:28:09
this topic of free speech? I mean there does seem to be a fundamental divergence. Um do you I I don't know the
00:28:17
conversations that you're having, but do you think this gets worked out or do you
00:28:21
think the divide gets greater? What like where's this headed? So before uh President Trump and Secretary Rubio did
00:28:29
me the honor of this appointment, I was a litigator and it was my job to fight. And now I'm a diplomat. So it is my job
00:28:36
to be diplomatic. And in that spirit, I would like to sound a uh gong of optimism.
00:28:42
>> Yeah. I think that a lot of ordinary Europeans are not comfortable with
00:28:47
comedians getting dragged out of the airport, just like Europeans weren't comfortable with comedians getting
00:28:52
murdered who are publishing offensive cartoons. And if you look at polls in Europe, I think you see some of the
00:28:58
sentiment. So, I don't know where things are going. I can't promise in a panacea,
00:29:03
but I will say that I've had productive conversations and hope that I'll have
00:29:07
more. I mean, if it does become more acute, is Europe prepared for all the American social networks to be turned
00:29:17
off and blocked by IP address because we really don't need the money like these
00:29:21
platforms. It's nice to make money in Europe, but maybe it's time >> or would the European or would various
00:29:27
European countries demand their own version? You know, would there be a UK specific version of X? Is that where
00:29:33
this would be headed >> to an extent? because you know one way to resolve the transnational issue is
00:29:37
geoencing. Now I think I I understand that some of the UK enforcement actions geofencing has not been enough which is
00:29:44
pretty ridiculous but you're essentially >> saying that's not enough for them.
00:29:48
>> Yeah. Like there's there's a there's a there's a small American website and I
00:29:51
can't recall the name of it that offcom has sued and that website responded well
00:29:55
we've geoenced we've blocked UK IPs so you should have nothing to say about the
00:29:58
content on our website but offcom is still going. >> Yeah, they should be good. But those
00:30:01
people then chose their citizens chose to get a VPN. Yes, that's well that's
00:30:05
>> which cost 30 bucks a year and then you can make your own decision >> which is what the people of Iran are
00:30:10
doing too. So >> um but I think I think you know you mention um like fire like blocking by IP
00:30:16
address. I think some countries that just where the people where they don't have that Charlie Hubo tradition like
00:30:21
countries like Russia or China they just admit that they are censurious societies
00:30:26
and they just block these websites when you have >> Yeah. I mean the great in China we have
00:30:32
the great firewall which we're not trying to take down. If you want to >> but could that happen? Could the UK put
00:30:37
up a great firewall and just say that >> you know we're black outside world.
00:30:41
>> We call your bluff. >> I think it's technologically it's technologically feasible to a point.
00:30:45
There are circumventions but it is not politically feasible because British people want to be free. And I think if
00:30:50
Kier Starmer said we're putting up a great firewall and you're not allowed to
00:30:52
access any American social media anymore, he'd be out of office. >> Right? So that is their right, but they
00:30:59
don't want to do that because it would be too obvious what they're doing. And
00:31:01
so therefore, >> they want to do the fines. They want >> to be fines and just have it be more
00:31:06
subtle. And we're pushing back saying, "No, you can't do that."
00:31:08
>> Yeah. Good luck doing that against Elon. He's pretty principal disc. I think he
00:31:12
can pay for the speeding ticket. I don't think it's going to be a problem. And I
00:31:15
would say President Trump because I I do think that that President Trump's election definitely changed the
00:31:20
direction of free speech in the United States, never mind the rest of the world, because I think under the Biden
00:31:25
administration, we now know from cases like Biden v. Missouri and then also uh you know what was released in the
00:31:31
Twitter files and then since then even more disclosure that's come out that the
00:31:36
Biden administration was pressuring social networks to engage in censorship. >> David, we did discuss this. You could
00:31:43
bring up Biden for all of 2025, but when 2026 came around, you had to I'm recounting I'm recounting what was
00:31:49
happening for several years and President Trump changed that direction. >> Absolutely.
00:31:53
>> And so if it weren't for that, I think we'd still be on a censorship.
00:31:56
>> If it was up to Zuckerberg, he would have continued to do it under Kamla. He
00:32:00
did it with no problem under Biden. He's a weather vein. His entire position is
00:32:05
based on what makes the system grow. >> Look, I think when it comes to these
00:32:08
>> I don't have any personal feelings on it. I think I think when it comes to the
00:32:11
the tech companies, there's let's say a range of courage. >> Yes. >> And so I'd say Elon is an outlier in
00:32:17
terms of willing to stand up Yeah. to the government in terms of protecting free speech and there's others who sort
00:32:23
of just kind of more blow with the wind and do whatever the government is sort of um suggesting. But demanding, but it
00:32:30
was wrong. It was wrong for the government to be doing that particularly in the US where you have a first
00:32:33
amendment. But let me >> and to catch people up, we literally had our FBI putting pressure on our own tech
00:32:40
companies to say we don't like the the tone of these tweets, the tone of these
00:32:44
posts we think are damaging, but we would have never gotten to the bottom of CO and if it actually we should all be
00:32:52
taking mysterious, you know, experimental vaccines. I took it. I'm okay. But like the folks who were
00:33:00
saying, "Hey, maybe we don't need this. Maybe we don't need to give it to kids.
00:33:03
They don't see that whole discussion was shut down by the Biden administration.
00:33:06
Now you got me doing it >> irrefutably and the the pretext for some of this was disinformation a term that
00:33:11
was really distended to encompass and if you read the white papers put out by these disinformation NGOs they will
00:33:16
admit yeah the information can be true but if it promotes an adverse narrative we don't like it and that's such an
00:33:22
Orwellian adverse narative misinformation. No, not misinformation. >> There's there's misinformation and
00:33:28
disinformation. And the way some people defined these was misinformation is false and disinformation is bad. And if
00:33:34
disinformation pollutes your democracy, the wrong candidate right might win. I think is really the impulse. But we had
00:33:40
information suppressed under opaces of combating disinformation. That turned out to be true. So things that were
00:33:47
suppressed included the assertion that the vaccine did not completely prevent transmission. That turned out to be
00:33:53
true. It it mitigated transmission significantly, but it was not a sterilizing vaccine. Another thing that
00:33:58
was suppressed, >> which by the way is why a lot of people took it. They didn't want they wanted to
00:34:02
be a blocker in the system, so like it's my social obligation to do it. >> And if had given the choice, they might
00:34:07
not have. >> And another thing that was suppressed that was suppressed was the assessment
00:34:10
that the virus might have leaked from a lab. And we now know that was that was the same assessment of a House committee
00:34:16
and the CIA. So the government thinks the virus, they're not sure, but it might have leaked from a lab more likely
00:34:21
than not. and you're you're reaching out to Twitter, to Facebook, to Instagram
00:34:26
saying, "Hey, you know, we can't force you to take these posts down under the
00:34:29
First Amendment, but we'd really appreciate if you did. And if you want to stay in our good graces, you should."
00:34:33
>> Which is a long way of saying we all need to be vigilant about it in the
00:34:36
United States, internationally. If you're not vigilant about free speech, there are people who will take it away.
00:34:42
>> Yes. And let me let me ask a question about that. So, you mentioned um organizations or NOS's who are kind of
00:34:47
instigating. They're like j you know, jinning up these regulators. They're
00:34:51
showing them cases. What about this? What about this? What about that? I'm curious, and I think you've called this
00:34:56
a censorship industrial complex. Could you just explain what this thing is? And do you think that I know that some of
00:35:03
these groups are in the US, not just Europe? In fact, they mostly might be in the US. And what I'm wondering is, are
00:35:09
they going to the European regulators as an end run around the First Amendment in
00:35:14
the US because they can get European regulators to censor material that otherwise could not be censored in the
00:35:20
US? I mean, it's a great question, but um it's a question we don't even need to
00:35:23
ask because we know the answer, and the answer is yes. So, we have emails that have leaked from some of these NOS's.
00:35:28
So, um one of them, the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which is a British NGO whose leader was the target
00:35:34
of um some of our visa sanctions. There are emails exchanged with with Democratic politicians in the United
00:35:39
States, and with politicians now very close to Kier Stormer saying um our number one priority should be to kill
00:35:45
Musk's Twitter. So, kill an American company, right? um in order to suppress
00:35:49
American political speech and our second priority is to instigate UK and EU regulatory action. So this is an entity
00:35:56
taking government money to get foreign governments to come after American businesses and this whole fact pattern
00:36:03
where these where these American NOS's were working with the American government to send kind of forceful they
00:36:10
allege not technically coercive emails to to Twitter and Meta. um that was an attempt by these activists to replicate
00:36:17
sort of the EU DSA in a way that would kind of dodge the American first amendment. So the EUDSA requires that
00:36:25
member states designate NOS's as so-called trusted flaggers. Meaning this this organization its job is to sit on
00:36:32
Twitter, look for offending tweets that might be hateful or whatever and report them to Twitter. and they get a
00:36:38
privileged reporting channel and the company's required to give th give those
00:36:42
reports first trunch priority. If you look at what was happening under Biden, it was a very similar system. These
00:36:48
government agencies would arrange first trunch priority for these reports and some of what was put into those
00:36:53
channels. The reports were technically made by NOS's. You also had you know the
00:36:57
the upside one of the small upsides of co if you care about government transparency is everyone was holding
00:37:02
their meetings on video. And so you have these videos of these Zoom meetings with
00:37:05
government operatives saying, you know, we couldn't do this under the First Amendment. But fortunately, this NGO on
00:37:10
this call with us is going to do it instead. >> Yeah. And they have ways of pressuring
00:37:14
people, which leads to my final questions for you, which is there are firms that would, it actually started in
00:37:22
the conservative space and moved to the liberal. Let's try to get advertisers to
00:37:26
cancel on this program. They went after Howard Stern and they went after the liberals first. Then they went after the
00:37:32
conservatives. let's get uh you know Rush Limbaugh's advertisers to cancel.
00:37:37
Oh my god, he said these incendiary things yada yada. Um but we had a even more pernitious one which is people
00:37:43
started to say well hey you're Cloudflare. Hey you're Amazon. Uh hey you're PayPal. Hey you're Stripe.
00:37:50
>> We're going to go after you and make sure that we shame slash pressure you
00:37:55
>> sometimes behind the scenes to debank and to demonetize. YouTube got pulled
00:38:02
into this as well, like we're going to shadowban your videos. They started labeling all-in videos because we had
00:38:07
conversations with scientists >> about co okay uh labeling also suppressed I think. So what are your
00:38:15
thoughts on that which seems even more pernitious because if you take away a person's ability to monetize it, how do
00:38:21
they scale right >> that? So there's been one successful Supreme Court case in US history on
00:38:27
viewpointbased debanking and that was my case um which we won and that was called
00:38:32
NRA versus VUO and the way we got that into court was you had you had the New York financial regulator um per the you
00:38:39
know per the pleadings literally reaching out to financial institutions saying you know it would really be
00:38:44
better for your enterprise risk management framework if you didn't do if you didn't do business with any proun
00:38:49
group >> enterprise riskmanagement framework. So you have all these professionals and you
00:38:54
guys have you know been in finance and you know this um like these this these bureaucracies hired within financial
00:39:00
institutions to ensure compliance with all these regulations and so they have these elaborate risk management
00:39:05
protocols and this gets a bit into the weeds but there's this thing in finance
00:39:08
called reputational risk and that's supposed to be the reputation of a bank for safety solveny and soundness. You
00:39:14
don't want to run on the bank if everyone thinks the bank might fail. That's bad for the system. But there's
00:39:19
this ESG movement to expand the concept of reputational risk to include things like do you have a reputation for
00:39:25
letting naughty disfavored speakers have bank accounts and that came up in the NRA case. Supreme Court says government
00:39:32
is not allowed to do that. Even though the government, you know, our first amendment says Congress shall make no
00:39:37
law, you know, restricting the freedom of speech. This wasn't Congress making a
00:39:40
law restricting their freedom of speech, but it was a government entity uh adversely applying regulations to choke
00:39:47
off certain viewpoints. And they were applying it instead of going directly to the guy saying the thing you don't like,
00:39:52
they're putting pressure on this risk averse middleman, this bank. And the the
00:39:56
the debanking and deplatforming is insidious for exactly that reason. When you have a risk averse middleman like a
00:40:03
financial institution, >> it's almost like they designed it that way. >> Yeah. they they they they don't have
00:40:08
skin in the game with respect. They don't believe in your speech the way you
00:40:11
do. They have their in-house counsel telling them that this is going to piss off the financial regulator. So, it's
00:40:16
easier to take it down. And my office is very >> So, that's a common theme is that when
00:40:21
the government can't do it directly because it' be a violation of the first
00:40:24
amendment, they use an intermediary to do it. >> So, you get the bank to debank someone
00:40:29
or you get an NGO, >> Dark NGO, >> which is really a government organization because it's funded by the
00:40:34
government, but they call themselves non-government. So they they do the quote unquote factchecking.
00:40:38
>> Yeah. >> You know, or um you know, you get one of these other cases where um you know, the
00:40:44
the this was a little bit more overt, but where the FBI through the Biden administration is then putting pressure
00:40:48
on the social networks. In any event, you get, like you said, a middleman to do the dirty work because the government
00:40:55
can't do it directly >> and to do it in a really nefarious >> Yes.
00:40:59
>> way that's hard to detect. Yes. It's like it'd be a shame if we blocked a
00:41:04
merger. Like they were very Zuckerberg's a pragmatist. I'm going to go at him
00:41:09
again. Like he likes to buy things. And if the FBI is calling you and you've got
00:41:12
to get something through the FTC next, you're going to try to make nice, right?
00:41:17
And that is the risk of giving any regulator kind of a capricious cudgel over the internet is even if the even if
00:41:23
the regulation isn't explicitly speechbased is just you can only do your merger if this guy likes likes the look
00:41:28
of the merger then companies are going to vi to impress that regulator that I think a bit of that was going on frankly
00:41:34
with the Jimmy Kimmel thing. um because you had this this this merger in the works, this Techno merger that they
00:41:40
tried to complete under the Biden administration and my friends in telecom tell me that when Techno was trying to
00:41:45
sell itself during the Biden administration, it went out of its way to show the regulator how woke it was.
00:41:50
And so now it has an incentive to show the administration that it's magal lined
00:41:54
and that's what happens when you give a regulator a large cudgel. Now I want to
00:41:58
say something about labeling. So >> labeling videos sounds oh it's just
00:42:02
transparency. What could be wrong with that? people people should know if fact checkers think that something is wrong
00:42:07
and I think my office's approach on that is it depends on who's putting the label
00:42:11
on there and for what purpose so a lot of these disinformation NOS's it was almost like mart it was almost like the
00:42:17
red scare they would make a list of outlets that were spreading disinformation but they wouldn't just
00:42:21
publish that list they would send it around to the credit card companies the payment processors and suggest with with
00:42:27
kind of an implicit government impromater because they're all government funded as David very very
00:42:31
relevantly points out like you know you guys really shouldn't be funding these
00:42:35
websites and the websites would never know why and the viewer would never know why. I think a type of labeling that's
00:42:40
really good is the type exemplified by community notes on X where I can read the tweet and then I can see what the
00:42:46
community notes say about it and you can see a ranking of the community total it's been a total game changer. I
00:42:52
remember when they were doing factchecking and the facteing was so bad cuz the fact checkers were biased or
00:42:56
sometimes it just wasn't good quality control but the community note thing has
00:43:00
like really worked and you'll see that when someone posts something that's
00:43:04
truly misinformation like it's a fake image or a fake article or something it
00:43:09
always gets caught amount of time and then you get notified >> you get a if you like have you noticed
00:43:15
this if you like it'll come circle back >> and then it gets community noted I get a
00:43:19
notification then I feel like an idiot that oh I got that. But you know what? People will
00:43:24
drag social media for, you know, the fakes or whatever. But I never get notified when the New York Times makes a
00:43:30
mistake and post a correction on page 43. They never notify anybody about that. They bury that on the last page.
00:43:37
So I still think social media is by far the best. >> Were you in the meeting for accuracy?
00:43:41
Were you in the meeting when >> they were deciding community notes or not? And Elon was like, "Tell me about
00:43:48
it." And I was like, "Elon, I think this is really interesting. You should
00:43:50
>> Yeah. double click on it because it's actually working. Um, and he looked at
00:43:56
it, he immediately understood the algorithm and he said, "Keep the group."
00:43:59
>> Yeah, >> that group stays. >> And you know what's the genius of that
00:44:02
algorithm is the community only gets promoted if users who usually disagree agree that that notice
00:44:07
>> they look for consensus amongst rivals. >> Yes. >> Which is a fascinating uh
00:44:13
>> the I'll tell you the other game changer um on X has been Grock cuz you can just
00:44:18
go at Grock what's the truth? Yeah. >> And you won't necessarily always agree
00:44:22
with Guac. I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's pretty darn good. >> It's trending in the right direction.
00:44:25
>> It's I mean, it's really good on the whole. And yeah, I mean, it does a
00:44:30
really good job facteing, too. So, we don't really need these bureaucrats and
00:44:35
politicians and regulators telling us what's true or not. We have community notes. We have AI now. You've got other
00:44:40
users >> and you can file a lawsuit if you feel you've been defamed. Like, this exists
00:44:44
in the United States. >> Exactly. >> As a concept. Uh, listen Sarah, we feel
00:44:49
I think I can speak for everybody uh here in the USA House that we're really
00:44:53
glad that you're so vigilant and dogged in protecting the First Amendment. Give
00:44:57
it up for Sarah Rogers.